Apart from the rather specific situation here, empowerment has always been a source of frustration, sometimes justified, sometimes not. I, too, have been in that situation; and it has led to as much deletions as it has to successes. In my situation specifically, it's European play times that has caused me to stop the empowerment process.

With trends like less players, less imms, less average play time per player, etc. a need arose to change certain mechanics (and we saw the introduction of exp bonuses at certain times, a scaled xp bonus per total players, and not so long ago the introduction of mercs as group members, etc). I have always seen and experienced great efforts to keep the game fun. Empowerment however, or the process of empowerment, hasn't changed much over the years. Empowerment has been, and should be, a decision of the Imm that is being followed within the Sphere; I don't think the empowerment process should be totally automated - but isn't it possible to introduce some more automated first steps?

More specifically, I am thinking in the direction of the pledge-squire-maran process in the Fort for instance (there are other similar cases out there) - in the sense that it is a staged process, with the first stage(s?) more easily accessible. Person X goes to pray to immortal A, timer starts running (the timer itself should probably be in-game based to avoid having people start the timer and then only log on until that time has passed), after a certain period and still no answer/reaction, immortal B takes over temporarily and gives person X a small quest (which Immortal A has approved beforehand). With the completion of said quest, person X receives a first empowerment (say till level 30). Those quests are picked from a list that has been drawn up by Imm A beforehand.

Oh, and yes, I do find myself in a similar situation as the original poster - I do understand the frustrations, as I have had those before, myself.